Plamegate: Bush Finally Speaks

Well, it's been four years, but President Bush has finally answered a question about the outing of Valerie Plame. And, as I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear, his answer was totally incoherent and disingenuous. Courtesy of TPM, here's the video:

When asked whether he was at all disappointed that people on his staff blew the cover of a CIA operative, Bush responded:

I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person. I've often thought about what would have happened if that person had come forth and said, 'I did it.' Would we have had this endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter? But, so, it's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House. It's run its course and now we're going to move on.

First, I love the use of the term "run its course," as if it's somehow natural or inevitable that a high-ranking official will obstruct an investigation, get prosecuted and convicted, and then have his sentence commuted by the President before he serves a day in jail. Yes, this is all the natural course of events. Nothing to see here.

More importantly, though, the substance of the President's response is just total nonsense. The "person" that he's referring to is clearly Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State. Bush implies that maybe this entire investigation could have been avoided had Armitage just come forward and fessed up to his role in outing Plame. But guess what: Armitage did come forward. He immediately told investigators that he had leaked Plame's identity to Bob Novak, not knowing that she was a covert operative.

Moreover, as Michael Abramowitz points out in today's Washington Post, this information was relayed to the White House:

Armitage did tell senior State Department officials what he had done after he realized he might have been the source for Novak's column. One of them called then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to report that the State Department possessed information relevant to the leak investigation and had already contacted the Justice Department.

The aide, former State Department lawyer Will Taft, asked Gonzales if he wanted to know the details. Gonzales said no, according to "Hubris," a book on the case by journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

Armitage not only fessed up to investigators, he had is aide offer to educate the White House about his role in the affair, so Bush's hypothetical makes no sense.

And compounding the absurdity of Bush's statement is the fact that Karl Rove (who still works for the White House) and Scooter Libby (whose prison sentence Bush just commuted) apparently didn't come forward and confess their own role in the affair. Both of them told Scott McClellan that they weren't involved in the leaking of Plame's name, despite the fact that Rove had leaked the information to both Matt Cooper and Robert Novak and Libby had leaked the information to Matt Cooper and Judy Miller. This then led McClellan to make false statements on behalf of the White House. And as all this was happening, President Bush promised to fire anyone who was involved. Libby was eventually indicted and convicted for lying and misleading investigators. Rove narrowly escaped indictment and only after being called back before the grand jury five times.

But now Bush has the nerve to publicly rebuke Richard Armitage? How totally shameless. And how totally pathetic that, after all these years, this is the only comment on this affair that Bush feels the American people are entitled to.